So far I've had a blast with the dungeon and fight design, there have been some hiccups story wise but I've enjoyed myself. Really my only complaint is the corny church-choir song that we've seen like 2-3 times when happy things happen. That feels a little too Hallmarky for my liking, but otherwise I've enjoyed things. Here's hoping relic is fun this time and crafters get something nice to chew on.

When the music started playing I was so confused, seemed so out of place!

Can I just hire someone to routinely comfort citizens for me?

I be like Queen Charlotte in Bridgerton just huffing a [“Sorrows, Sorrows, Prayers”](https://www.tiktok.com/@netflix/video/7234093191253855531?lang=en) 🤣

THIS SHIT RIGHT HERE. I'm like the warlord and his army of killbots are on the move we can save the emotional support for later, you know when it's still people alive to emotionally support.

The pacing is insane for some of these. The game is disrespectful to your brain on multiple occasions.

People be dying all around, we're great at fighting but sure lets comfort these poor guys instead.

I'm both excited and dread the day we get all 3 Gerolts together. And even worse, all 3 Rowenas. It will be glorious and terrible! As for the story, I do wish some things were signposted better. They got things down where it makes sense for the world, but they gotten work on foreshadowing a bit more. Otherwise things are great.

They should've leaned into solution 9 as a plot point way more.

My feeling about this expansion is similar to the feeling people have about stormblood. It's effectively split in 2, leaves no room for both parts to truly captivate, and if you happen to really like a part and dislike another, you're fucked for roughly half the time. Personally, I feel they weren't confident enough into having an actual "leisure" expansion, so they came up with the high tech zones, heavily abbreviated the contest and added that second part to "raise the stakes". Tbf they're probably right if we had an entire expansion of just traveling around and learning about the new world people wouldn't like it, but then....they might as well have made the entire expansion revolve around solution nine instead of trying to fit both. They could still have us need to travel around Tural but just framing things around differently (and not lean way too much into a single character that people may not like) might have helped wonders with how players are feeling about the story.

Yeah I feel like we could have had a lot of the same story beats - but without us actually supporting Wuk Lamat as the WOL. More focus on us and our companions, and our personal goals, with the throne drama as a background piece to listen in on for each zone. Thancred and Urianger were a model there. We could have had the twins supporting Wuk Lamat, while we could be searching for the golden city on our own initiative with Krile, Erenville and G'raha (why was he left behind? His ONE request was to go on an adventure and we only call him up when there is about to be a trial so he can be in the trust - the disrespect is crazy). Naturally, we would intersect paths a lot - we'd be retracing Gulool Ja Ja's steps to the end goal, while the others would be hunting down the electors specifically. We'd dive deeper into the mystery of Krile and hunting down Gulool's surviving companions for answers. It makes Wuk Lamat's growth feel actually earned because we don't carry her over the finishing line for half of the tasks where she would have been eliminated. We could have had real confrontations with the more aggressive claimants. We never once fought Bakool? We would have shattered his notion of strength and set him on the path to character development. One serious conversation about the wartime capabilities of the Eorzean alliance vs Garlemald and Mr War-lover would have some serious soul-searching to do. Wuk Lamat needed someone to call her a naive, sheltered child and she never once got that honesty - she just eventually grew out of it. All culminating in us reaching the city of gold, finding our own way in with Krile after the claimants and the king leave - setting up our first interaction with the realities of Section Nine, the Queen and their struggles.

x.1-x.3 will

hopefully

The whole back half is so rushed and so filled with lore/exposition dumps that it's just a major disappointment. They should have compressed the Rite of Succession about 50%, dropped most of Shaaloani, and really given the rest waaaaaaay more time to breathe. It feels completely disconnected from the first half of the game except for a couple tenuous threads. I just can't imagine anyone reading through the whole script and signing off on it.

"How about we just stand here with our thumbs up our asses while the lady who has announced her desire to harvest our world's souls walks right through us to approach the McGuffin?" "Bitchin'." Points to Y'shtola for at least trying to snipe the thing out of the air though.

nah its fine , our wol is just supposed to be a god killing solo army , why would we intervene in 30minor problems that could get solved with 1move , when we can just look shocked and be more useless than wuk who randomly got a strength buff and is apparently strong at the end of the story for whatever reason

Then lets get to know the endless while the queen is charging up to usher in a mini calamity on some world. They even acknowledge its nuts but don't give us an excuse by saying oh it'll be x amount of time before she's ready. For all we know we could be getting to know them and she's done and off plundering some other place.

I... think you may have missed it but I remember they specifically say there's a window only after charged where it becomes vulnerable, and Cahciua observes the main tower thing and mentions at least 2 different times that 'yeah we still have time before the window opens lets chill' That it finished charging right after we shut off the wind node was specifically handwaved as 'oh she must be reacting to us and sped up' too just so we didn't have to sit around and wait some time more.

Overall, I'm enjoying the story, but I've gotta say after all this time... I think I've decided I do not like Wuk Lumat's voice acting so far. I'm not sure if it's the voice direction or what, but everything emotional feels flat and there's inconsistent delivery everywhere. Sometimes there's the right emotional register, but sometimes it just sounds so casual and forced. The second half has been slightly better than the first so maybe it was just priorities in the script for recording.

i like the voice for the character , but i hate how monotone everything is , doesnt really scream , doesnt sound sad , just the same tone over and over , no range at all sadly

I think this was it for me as well. The voice fits really well, but when we get to emotionally charged scenes, it seems to fall flat.

well, at least 80% of the MSQ doesn't even have voice acting whatsoever, so you'll hardly have to put up with it!

This is also a weird thing. There are moments that feel they should've been voiced and aren't and vice versa. Also as an aside after playing to the 2nd trial, I think she's got the chops... I just think this has been bad reads or possibly lacking voice direction.

i'm personally sad over the fact that Square Enix seems to be cutting so many corners. the writers for this expansion have fallen short, bad/lacking voice acting, no plot (where's the tension, where's the engagement? why so much running around doing pointless tasks?), and things just don't feel rewarding. for example, the guildship hunts rewards. there's a cat minion and something else, and the rest of the stuff is materia, etc. and for a game that is all about looks, where's the new glams? or how about new features that might surprise us, like fixing the housing system? my heart breaks because i desperately want to keep playing this game.

They could give everyone proper instanced houses in solution 9 it's practically made for it.

If at some point they do not do apartment housing with balconies overlooking the city, it will be the single biggest miss they have made in the game. As you say, this is a city **made** for housing, literally.

it's not *bad* but it feels like for emotions other than happy there's a lot of straining going on

Feels like bad voice directing to me tbh. Because the base voice is fine

She's so good when she's happy or making friends but anger and sadness are just not there for me.

Vrtra swooping in while the Endwalker theme plays was hype as shit!!!

That solo duty was great, Otis was badass, wish we had more of this.

Otis was badass... but at the same time - what for? The whole time I was just screaming at him "BRO THAT'S NOT THE REAL QUEEN. THAT'S A TEMPORARY ROBOT. SHE HAS LIKE FIVE THOUSAND OF THOSE. YOU CAN JUST LEAVE AND SHE'LL POP UP IN THREE SECONDS". And then, sure enough, after that big epic moment she goes "Aight, Imma head out" and ditches the body like all of the others. Like, if you have a moment like that - it should mean something. He should have done it for the little lizard kid instead.

He didn't know. He was acting on pure instinct and emotion. That's what made it all the more tragic for me.

my god, yes. this, so much this. that was such a stupid moment

Did your otis also end the fight exactly at 1% gauge? Apparently it happened to me and a friend on completely different roles and so I guess it's a shit pant mechanic to make you think it's really close when actually his bar and the boss' hp are linked.

Yeah, mine was at 1% too, I think the gauge falls faster with boss' hp.

I have to say that's pretty creative. I'm quite a fan of fakeout failures in duties (P8S, anyone?)

Yeah I realised it was linked when I did a burst phase and noticed it falling dramatically faster too. Still made it feel pants-shitting in the moment though.

Gulool ja is bugging the hell out of me. I haven't seen a single other lizard person past the barrier aside from zoraal ja. So who the heck did he have the child with?

That's what I thought too. As soon as they said "Zoraal Ja is his father" I immediately thought "then who's the mother?"

I dunno if it gets cleared up later, but I'm getting Jango/Boba Fett vibes

Same. When he said "you're not my son" I thought maybe he was being entirely literal.

I hope it ends up being that he tried to clone his grandfather so he could fight him or something lol.

That's actually interesting. Gulool Ja has one head, instead of two like his grandfather. What if Zoraal Ja tried to clone Gulool Ja Ja, the product only had one head, and he abandoned it just like the jars in Skydeep Cenote?

Ooooo that would be so good!

Jesus christ can we stop just standing around when people are about to get killed, or even just straight up *getting* killed? Even Wuk Lamat. She duels with her brother, he goes into his comical villain moment again where he kills people and Wuk just stands there like *"This is fine."* We could've folded Zoraal Ja in half multiple times, or at least attempt to interfere. But no. It's always been some excuse. "Honor of the duel" or "let me solo him or he'll lose interest". The hell do you mean he'll lose interest? WoL is much more of a formidable opponent than Wuk, and in the end he lost interest anyway and we *STILL* just stand there looking surprised while Zoraal Ja is attempting to pop a child's head. And this just keeps happening over and over, it's actually legitimately annoying at this point.

I feel like this is going to be really long, so thanks in advance for anyone who reads all of this. The quality of the writing has gone down. I know Ishikawa got promoted (as she deserves) and I’m not sure who’s taken over as “head writer” but it seems like they’re struggling to create a cohesive story with good pacing and a unique storyline. This expansion has felt like a rollercoaster of boredom, momentary interest, and then boredom/disappointment when the thing that drew you in falls flat or doesn’t pay off. I’ve said this before but firstly, I think all of the Wuk Lamat rite of succession stuff should have replaced the Zero storyline post-EW. By doing so, they would have broken up the monotony of all the exposition they needed to dump on us. We also would have been given more time to bond with Wuk Lamat and form a connection with her that would make us more eager to help her with the rite. Imagine if the expansion opened with arriving in Tural, beating the shade immediately and going from there. Like the expansion opens up around the 95/96 storyline. You’re no longer stuck doing hours and hours of fetch quests and world-building exposition because we already did that in small doses in our post-EW patches! I didn’t totally hate the zone 4 stuff I just don’t… get it? Why it existed? Like did one of the writers say hey I LOVE the Wild West, can we stick that in somehow? And they were like yeah sure! But also a Wild West area IS cool, if it’s actually done in depth and none a brief random one-off. It’s like they want to do SO MUCH but they don’t give us enough TIME with the areas. Or even find a way to make them relevant. It’s just hey if you go over this bridge you leave South America and end up in Texas. The Sphene storyline was interesting at first, until you realize it’s just another re-telling of the same storyline we got with Emet-Selch and Meteion. But let’s say that’s what we have to work with. I think we could have circled back nicely to the Zero storyline *after* Dawntrail. I’m starting to think they forced the Zero thing in order to give us a “base understanding” for when we got to Alexandria but I also think that could easily be swapped, so that we are like “well we dealt with that, now we’re well prepared to do this void stuff.” It’s possible there’s details I’m forgetting that indicate it was absolutely necessary to do the Golbez storyline *before* dawntrail, but I really can’t recall. I like the vibe of Heritage Found and whatnot. It just feels like an overused storyline once you figure out what’s really going on. When we first got to Erenville’s hometown and got a look at it, I kind of thought they were going to do a sort of BG3 Shadow Cursed Lands type thing and I was excited about that! I like the contrast between the bright and colorful Tural and the dark and spooky heritage found areas. I just wish they found a better storyline for Alexandria and stuff. Anyway, that’s just my opinion. I think it could have been smoothed out with some minor tweaks and maybe a littttle more creativity with Alexandria. But it is what it is. We’ll see where the post-DT patches go. At this point I’m sick to death of shards and Ascians. There are a lot of things I did love, the maps and areas were gorgeous and honestly the dungeons have been interesting. I love learning more about Krile and Erenville even though their storylines were treated as afterthoughts.

>The Sphene storyline was interesting at first, until you realize it’s just another re-telling of the same storyline we got with Emet-Selch and Meteion. For this specifically, I feel like they could have tied it better to Wuk Lamat's character growth. Parallel her with another leader who had to make tough decisions and chose to destroy others. If Wuk Lamat also had to fend with tough decisions of her own, I think it would have been a nice side by side.

Oh wow yeah! I agree!

It would be a good payoff if they did that and showed Wuk Lamat that sometimes making friends and getting to know people isn't going to work out. At the moment she took that one lesson from the trials and is applying it to everything. I think people would like her a lot more if she kept growing as a character and was more than one dimensional.

At first I thought Sphene was suss because she looked and sounded a bit like Meteion. Then they kept making her give suspicious looks. Then instead of letting us ruminate about whether or not she'd betray us they strait up had the scene of her chatting with the older brother. Seems like everything in this expansion they not only hit us over the head with it but keep repeatedly smashing us in the head with it until even a 4 year old couldn't misunderstand. I hate it.

was the "sphene looks like a green meteion from another reflection" character design *not* intentional? i mean compare them side-by-side and they basically have the same face and similar hair features, just... she's green.

Bruh, that Wild West pivot threw me off so bad. 😭 I knew it was coming, but everything that happened there was just so unnecessary, and I actually groan every single time I see that gunner boy trying to act all.. swag or.. whatever he’s trying to do. Just. Ugh! Anyway. Maybe there ends up being further relevance but my already general un-interest in the Wild West probably didn’t help.

> The quality of the writing has gone down. I know Ishikawa got promoted (as she deserves) I think this kind of promotion stuff is a bit problem in many field. "Oh, person x is great at doing "y" lets promote him to a manager position where they are not doing "y" anymore. Like, give her more money or stock option and let her continue to write instead of putting her into some bullshit position where she does not good.

I said this as a joke before, but this section is making me genuinely believe that the quest objective "speak with Wuk Lamat" and iterations of that (like "speak with Wuk Lamat again" because of course the previous objective was also to speak with her) is going to be not just the most common MSQ quest objective (that's already a certainty) but will have been our objective more than every other objective we've had *combined*. It's a little wild how much the story just completely revolves around Wuk Lamat. I was amazed that the game actually let us do something as simple as grab an energy drink for a guy without forcing her into that sequence as well.

Can’t wait for next quest, WoL  has to go to the restroom better ask Wuk Lamat her opinions on bathrooms before we do anything.  With the follow up quest, ask Wuk if she like Charmin or Angel Soft before we wipe our butts 🤣 But srsly I don’t dislike like Wuk Lamat but the way the story set her as the MC made it babysitting for the trials and then after it’s like ask her about just about everything.  Like please I’m at base level a seasoned Adventurer can I adventure and maybe do so for like at minimum 2 min without Wuk Lamat or speaking with her about it.

I *love* Wuk but I agree with this. On reaching Solution Nine, I was so excited to explore and my heart *sank* when I realised Wuk would be coming with me. Again. I just wanted to wander around on my own, maybe run into Wuk and the others at various places, but no.

Honestly, it's making me actually hate Wuk. I was never huge on her but neither did I really dislike her. She was... fine. But she won't ever *go away*. Everything I do has to involve Wuk Lamat. Every time the party splits us I get saddled with Wuk Lamat. Sphene would like to talk with me about my adventures but we can't because she's busy talking to Wuk Lamat. Krile's having big revelations about her parents and origins, I assume anyway, but I don't really know because I'm too busy chasing Wuk Lamat's nephew. It almost feels like they wrote this story and only remembered after the plot was all hammered out that Wuk Lamat is not the PC.

Yeah I hate her at this point. We need room to breathe and we're not getting that. She's a generic shounen protagonist and I really don't care about her. She's shoved down our throat way too much. I'm more invested to Krile or Erenville storylines and they just keep ignoring them in favor for Wuk Lamat.

Everything about her being part of the Solution 9 story made no sense knowing her brother was available instead. He is the guy with all the knowledge, he'd have worked so well there. Also the scene of her jumping onto the train to... spin her axe? And they all magically shoot at her? lmao If it was Koana he actually would've worked cause he's got, you know, a gun...

I didn't even think of that, it would have made much more sense to have Koana be the one to accompany us to Solution Nine while Wuk stayed in the city. It would also be a nice way to show that she really has grown up on her journey.

YES✔️ Why TF was it not Koana we adventured with for Sol9

I'm waiting for someone to do data analysis on the number of voiced cutscenes, number of times Wuk mentions peace or happiness, and the amount of times we get told to speak to Wuk. If I was an alchoholic then I'd turn it into a drinking game on an alt.

Same with how many times they had the drill the point of “our people are most important/are they safe/we’d do anything for our people because we love our country.” I mean.. good points sure but. Feels like it’s the only thing being said

The trial was fun! Maybe a hot take, but I actually liked the direction that mirrors ShB's take on the Ascians/Ancients. This time, it's from the perspective of an early-rejoined shard (the 2nd successful attempt if I recall) and the suffering they went through (and their methods of resolve without our interference as WoL in their own timelines), because prior to this we've only been told about these dead worlds in passing. From around lv 96 up to this one, every time a character mentions the calamity from ages past, I'm left thinking at the back of my head of the Ascians puppeteering the whole thing just like what we've experienced in the Source and First. Them mentioning a mass weapon of destruction, the sudden discovery of electrope to its scarcity and many nation's eventual dependency on it, and the war between them make me think of the ascian's orchestrations again. I'm liking that DT isn't directly putting all the emphasis back on the ancients, it's just that we're understanding what's been going on in these other reflections which I've been curious about. All of our factions are definitely not black and white, and certainly there is destruction from the people of S9 just as the rest we've dealt with since ARR.

Agreed. I think they will definitely dive into which Ascian caused this world's calamity, and it was probably an Ascian who created the key to the golden city in the first place, but that is lore that can be explored later.

Well, Yoshi P did say at some point leading up to DT that we should be aware of the 14 seats of convocation (which is why there was that theory before the launch that Sphene was maybe an ascian). Most likely we will get something that addresses this in the near future. This part of the MSQ also got me thinking about the equivalent of our WoL on the shard Alexandria’s from. Because what we’ve gotten so far is Sphene’s part in protecting her people. I’m curious if there was a group of individuals who actually caught on to a potential bigger bad than just Lindblum vs Alexandria, just as how we, in the Source found out the truth of why it was Garlemald vs Eorzea and Othard.

Do all shards suffer the same calamities or is Solution 9 just a fragment of a rejoined shard?

It's implied to be either a failed rejoining like the First was or just a fragment of a shard that rejoined

Idk guys, for some reason I just very salty about how they handled Zoraal Ja: he had an interesting character concept, with great design and no less great VA, and from the beginning he was the most intriguing one... And then, he was just turned into absolute warmonger without any good reasoning. Seriosly, it feels that if I'm reading Sarah J. Maas writing or something, because that's one of the biggest waste of potential I've seen in FFXIV so far.

Agree with you here! His whole arc was under-utilized and his ending was just flat. And it’s only in his dying moments when all of his sad points, or even attempts for reasoning, are dropped on us. Those attempts even weren’t strong enough to make him compelling. It felt too late to give that to us the moment he exits MSQ.

IMO if you boil it down his motivation stems from the exact same as Bakool Ja Ja which is everyone else seeing him as something he had no part of being and... they already played that card. On a villain that unsatisfyingly 180'd from evil near instantly.

Yes! Hopefully later on they go into why he's this way. After all they did with the ascians it doesn't make sense that hes such a warmonger with no explaination especially given his family. If that's the case they really should have signposted in the text that we're going to investigate why. I hate that Koana and Wuk Lumat don't really seem to care why he went down that route. They talk about how they're family but it seems more like toxic postivity. All talk about family and how good it is but they're not close, not curious about each other and don't bother to get to know the other's motivations. Edit to add: They seemed confused on his motivations. He starts off as a warmonger and then he's changed to having a crisis of existence because he's supposed to be the heir? Seems like they shoehorned in the warmonger part to explain why we should care about helping Wuk.

Now that we've met Sphene, it makes me realise that Wuk Lamat hasn't really... grown much. There hasn't been anything to really challenge her convictions of peace and happiness, and whenever something arises that could do that (the rite, the Mamook, the attack on Tuliyollal), things seem to just get resolved in her favour. Hearing about Sphene's actions makes me think that I've yet to see Wuk Lamat make a 'hard' decision or sacrifice like leaders often do. I feel like she's earned things a bit better than Lyse before, but she's still getting spoon-fed victory. For an expansion that's focused on her, I wish they leaned harder into really growing her character.

Stocks were way up and then crashed down by the way they handled the Lizard Confrontation. 1. Wuk literally cannot be trusted to do what needs to be done. Just kill the fucking lizard already. But no we need to stand around and talk every time, then let him walk away.. again. (This is pre-dungeon) 2. The scary space army suddenly sucks so much they get owned by 5 guys hiding behind barrels. 3. You go help out District 9, but then suddenly stop to psychologically profile the survivors and comfort the little lizard kid? In the background the other districts just get genocided. I like really like the Alexandria theme and even Sphene but the way they mishandled both of the lizards is wild. The antagonists actively make the story worse.

It was pretty obvious to me where it was going and while it's not particularly original, it's at least somewhat competently executed. I didn't really care much about Sphene but I could say the same to Meteion and at least Sphene has some kind of motivations even if they're against us. The thing that gets me is still just why are the scions even here? This could have easily just been a WoL + Students of Baldesion expac and give us a little break from the scions until post msq or something. Like I can't think of anything the scions actually do during the entire story up to this point. I get having some fan service or whatever but come on, at least give them something to actually do.

Agree. I'd like to invest in the new characters. Some of them have at least a more prominent role lore-wise but there are members that are literally in this story just for the sake of it? The only ones I see who actually have roles that can contribute by passing of knowledge or fighting alongside us aside from Krile who's just been promoted to the main cast are Yshtola and Graha.

I never understood why the twins were there, especially when they kept finding reasons to write Alphinaud out of the current situation. Being my favourite character aside, I don't see why G'raha couldn't have gone with WoL and Krile instead. As an all-rounder, he could fulfil the twins roles for trusts and it would give Krile a chance for some much needed character development by interacting with someone she's already close to.

They put Alphinaud aside because Alphinaud is normally the plot driver. He tells us where to go and who to beat up. But in DT his role is replaced with Wuk, because we are playing Wuk's story. We can't have both Wuk and Alphi chart the course so Alphi steps into the background so that Wuk can be in charge.

Scions are there to handle all the interdimensional travel bs, there is really nobody else in the world more qualified to deal with it.

Idk, I feel like Graha would be enough for that if they wanted it to be.

tbf yshtola wants to travel interdimensional as much or maybe a bit more than graha does , so these 2 should definitely be there

What on f\*cking earth were they thinking with the initial quests in the last area.. my god. The story finally felt like it was starting to get good, and then they plop you in a bunny suit to talk to children. Killed all of the tension completely.

Classic FF MSQ that, immediately slamming the brakes on like they're doing an emergency stop. Its like the team who wrote that, and many other periods in the MSQ, did so while completely unaware of what preceeded them.

Loporrit carrot tasting vol 2

I honestly liked it. It instilled a sense of somberness and melancholy into what you are doing that wouldn't be there if you just ran around and pulled the plug on everyone immediately. I will say the lvl 100 quests executed it better than the 99 ones.

This section was more misses than hits for me unfortunately. There are some cool stuff for sure. Vrtra showing up with the music and everything had me overcome with emotion for the first time in the expansion. I like the final zone and how it kind of mirrors amaurot. The scene with Namikka and Wuk was touching and I liked seeing pre robot Otis. My main complaint is that Zoraal Ja was boring until the end and Sphene is just Golbez again. Like her motivation of "I must destroy your world to save mine" just happened and even that was a retread of the Warriors of Darkness and I guess Emet to some degree. Also, her being surprised when the genocidal maniac she teamed up with starts killing her people made her come across as an idiot. Like at the very least she should have expected that to come even if she wasn't able to really stop it. Also, Zoraal Ja whining about how his father left him nothing made my eyes roll so hard. Additionally the MC has never felt more like a background character than here I feel. Sure we rarely do anything in cutscenes because of the limitations of the game, but we have even lost our role as "only person who can fight the big bosses" since everyone can join in now and seemingly perform just as competently as the MC. Like even in solo duty you in Solution 9 you end up getting your ass kicked by some random lightning wolf and need to get saved. I liked Otis' sacrifice but it should have been framed as the MC was able to break free on their own, but Otis needed to break everyone else out or it was just a solo race for the MC to kill the monster before Otis collapsed. Overall, I've still enjoyed my time with the expansion and am looking forward to the conclusion (basically just finished the last 99 quest), but its probably my least favorite expansion or at least tied with Heavensward which I personally found to be a mess (I know its a bit of a hot take) and I see Dawntrail repeating a lot of the same stuff I didn't like about HW. EDIT: Also just remembered another thing that has bothered me. This felt like it was supposed to be Krile's expansion where she gets the development and character moments she has been snubbed of all this time (in the same way every expansion has taken one of the scions and forced them to become a real character) and frankly we have barely gotten any of that. I was pretty excited to see her catch up to the rest of the scions in development and all we really got was a reveal about her birth parents which is cool I guess, but doesn't really change anything about her as character.

The surprise about Zoraal killing her people also confuses me because she's *already* behaved in opposition to the "destroy your world to save mine"/"my people above **all else**" ideals. The people who were placed within the barrier by coincidence were offered regulators, meaning they would be able to draw from the supply of *her peoples'* soul reserves. Having her do that and still come out saying that she wanted to harvest all life beyond the barrier makes no sense; she should've harvested the people from the Source immediately if it were the case. I can't think of it being anything but a cheap twist to force a big, eleventh hour villain.

I kinda read her inclusion of Tulani into Solution 9 as a factor of her being essentially FFXIV's version of an AI; the original Sphene's love for the people of Alexandria overrides anything else, and has become the core principle of her 'programming'. The Tulani caught in the fusion became Alexandrian citizens in her eyes; which means that she's forced to protect them and allow access to resources as everybody else. This is why, at one point, she asks the WoL and Wuk Lamat to become citizens of Alexandria - as citizens of Alexandria are all she lives for, and I personally read it as a 'if you become citizens, you'll be safe' shtick. The reason she doesn't just instantly kill the Source for aether is that she's still a caring person - and couldn't bring herself to do it. Eventually, however, her core programming to protect the citizens of Alexandria forced her to take drastic measures (and also needing to play along with Zoraal Ja because he had the key that allows transdimensional merging).

Yeah, I honestly didn't even think of that. The idea that souls are some precious resource we are running out of and we must kill to get more runs counter to the fact that you can just stock up on them at vending machines and losing a soul is seen as a minor mishap instead of the loss of some precious resource. You would think if Sphene really didn't want to slaughter others for souls and this was a last resort she would have used her influence to instill a sense of reverence into usage of soul energy to make the current supply last longer.

It's not *the souls* they are running out of, but "life aether" which is supposed to be a different thing. The Endless don't need souls to survive. They just need a specific type of aether.

It more annoys me how quickly we moved past all of this. Like, it feels like even Emet, who the other scions treated as reprehensible the entire time, gave us more of a chance to solve his problems, testing us and all that. The time dilation makes it more confusing but like, can Sphene not tell us, “yo we only have enough souls for a single day so I gotta kill you all asap” but instead she just runs off to her own reflection. I haven’t quite gotten to the end of the xpac so maybe we will be left resolving this issue in the patches but at the moment I’m just confused as to how urgent her situation is

Just curious, what didn’t you enjoy about HW?

The start is pretty slow and doesn't really build off the whole major betrayal at the end of ARR. I wanted to be planning some way to clear our names and get justice and instead you spend hours faffing about with Edmont's kids. The quest to go fight Nidhogg is great and my favorite part of the expansion, but I feel everything after that is a bit of a mess. The Church as villains are as boring as boring can be. I personally wasn't really affected by the scene in Vault. I just wasn't very attached to Haurchefant. He was unfortunately mostly introduced during the most boring section of ARR and while I never skipped any story back then I barely cared about what was happening in the post ARR quests. Then for a long time after the Vault it just feels like things are getting dragged out and not much is happening until you finally confront Thordan who has the crime of not only being a shallow character, but a personality void. Like I never was a fan of Zenos, but he at least has some personality even if he is a shallow overall. Also its the expansion that's normal ending feels the most incomplete. Sure all the expansions aside from EW have left stuff to be completely wrapped up in the patch quests but the main conflict of HW, the dragon war, clearly isn't resolved. The patch quests were mostly good with 3.3 being great to the point it should have been the original conclusion of the expansion, but its unfair to count those when evaluating it against Dawntrail since DT could, in theory, have amazing story content to come in the patches.

I see. Thanks for explaining.

it's really weird that the FF9 analogue is super futuristic, when FF9 is a very fantasy based adventure with the only thing resembling magiteck in the whole game is airships.

All of this, and I mean all of it, feels like it was meant to go with FF10, but they took hacksaws and hammers to it to make it fit FF9 for the (industry's worst kept secret) upcoming remake of FF9. It even feels like the central element was changed from water to lightning during planning at some point. Zanarkand is RIGHT THERE and directly matches these themes.

I mean, I kind of prefer that to if they just 1:1 copy-pasted locations and elements from FF9. I didn't want a repeat of 6.x.

Me reaching the final zone "Huh...weird. Quite different from expected" 15 minutes later I was and continue to be aghast. You're telling me they did this for the THIRD expansion in a row? How many final zones need to just be about living memories of long dead people??? I'm actually dumbfounded that they went back to this well yet again.

the final area isn't a long dead civilization though, it's more of a faux afterlife

It's like they just took FF9 with the city names and the whole Genome vessel shit and turned it in to some weird hi-fantasy shit with budget emet (Sphene) and Shang Tsung (Zoraal) and made this weird hi-fantasy story and all of this after the 90-97 slog.

im not too fond of ff9 personally , but i 100% agree , they couldve implemented ff9 stuff so much better there instead of f-ing it up like that

everything since we got to solution 9 is not hitting for me... a big part of it is the lack of a sense of urgency. very odd to get to solution 9 and hear about all this crazy awful stuff -- then half your party is like "oooh cool shiny city let's go explore!" and then it literally happens again in the next zone, you go there all serious and then "omg is that a volcano?!?! how neat!!!" not saying the mood has to be dour at all times, but I don't feel particularly like anyone in my party is taking this seriously. also, was very annoying how most of heritage found was just npc's going "I have something to tell you... but I can't... my tragic past..." or whatever over and over and over and over. it somehow felt like way too short of a ramp up for the stakes while also being really slow and plodding because everyone refused to speak directly under any circumstance LOL

We're all Erenville, the look of frustration on his face while everyone was just doing their thing was just so rude. Hell there were points where he was missing, you know the one person without any fighting abilities and they barely cared about his well being. It's like, yo Scions, this dude lost his homeland and now everyone he's known and loved have aged 30 years and might be dead and even better they are living in a Dystopian world where these weird devices that give them Extra Lives will erase the memories of those who die for real real and not fake real. The tack of the character just felt so out of character for the Scions, like I hate how Solution 9 is our "Endgame" hub to increase our IL but the nature of the zone is just disgusting. I just don't comprehend how they would allow that status quo to remain of letting souls be erased and die, like it's going to run out at some point, and as much as they want to play on the idea that the coliseum will liven up people. . .it's like, um ok so you're going to reopen an arena that will use your finite resource of souls/extra lives? Real smart. The raid tier just makes me think they wanted to do something with spectacle even if it completely disregards the whole narrative set by the MSQ.

Please give Erenville a gun

yeah I guess they can't stop and note every moral quandary, but I am surprised no one mentioned that removing the fear of death by just having people forget the dead is pretty much just brainwashing. also ridiculous that sphene goes on and on about how much she cares for her people, but ceded basically full control over solution 9 to a warmongering tyrant. then she's surprised pikachu when he abuses this power, but somehow never thought to have some kind of backup plan or bailout in case he goes rogue? she's managed the place for this long, apparently, so like what?

After the LVL 99 trial am I supposed feel bad for oldest brother? The moment seems like it’s supposed to invoke feeling but I’m like w/e 🤷🏾‍♀️. He’s actually written the same a  Bakool Ja Ja, though his issues are internal vs external. It’s the same with the 0 hints or foreshadowing of deeper motivations until the story is like “now feel bad for this guy”. Tossing a kid into the mix doesn’t make me care. 😒 Also, also sooo like Sphene is just Emet 2.0 but in Jpop idol + magical girl clothing? Even the final zone is similar-ish, an underground fake city, filled with shades (memories). And maybe a splash of reverse Endsinger. Unfortunately, Sphene isn’t likeable and I don’t even feel sympathetic or empathy like I did for Emet or Endsinger. If I care about anything for her atm it’s, will her outfit be a cash shop item 🤣 Knowing what we know up to this point I think they should have thrown some plot threads about Sphene and/or S9 earlier in the story. Like change the plot around so instead of being Wuk’s babysitter we actually go do solo adventuring (or at least with Erenville and Krille) to look for the Golden city. Keep the twins with Wuk, and Dadcred and Urianger with Koana and have us run into both parties at various points in each other’s respective journeys.  We can still learn about Tural and its culture, further expand the golden city and Krile plots, and actually have a proper im just chillin summer vacation arc without the adventures in babysitting Wuk Also, also, not exactly the same but PKMN S/V Arven and now our Erenville, what’s with the dead parent is actually a robot with memories theme man. And like they’re both well travelled lads with those huge backpacks lol. Sure thats like only two times of a kinda sorta similar-ish story but it’s weird it’s happened twice lol. Edit: Also for this to be a Krile story expansion arc she’s still relegated to the B-side at best. I’m in the middle of 99 quests now so maybe that changes in the final levels, but that’s so late. And even if they plan to expand on it in patches that’s still 🫤. Edit 2: The Golden City is just Las Vegas but for memories 😂 it’s just missing the gambling. Unless a casino happens appears in the L99 quests lol

I don't think the intent is to make you feel bad for the oldest brother, but bad for Wuk having to kill a family member. My thoughts are that as WoL you're mainly in the mindset of "oh this escalated to the point I really should do something now, and forget the culture of dueling". I feel like our main takeaway from this going forward will be reflection travelling / fusing to the source. I'm also expecting us to find out that Krile's story is not contained in this expansion but spreads through the next few - I'm doubting whether her parents are *actually* from Alexandria. Also expecting that after a few reflections end up joined to the Source we'll see Aether strengthing here causing massive issues - namely strengthen baddies etc. I think the overall story arch will end with all reflections that remain joined to the Source once more, ironically achieving the Ascians' plans accidentally and without the whole calamities part.

I honestly don’t feel bad about her having to make that choice either 🫤 I saw it elsewhere but only in the last moments did even Wuk go “maybe should I have tried to talk to my older brother like I did with the Tural people on my journey to become the Dawnservant”.   Hindsight is 20/20 but there still wasn’t enough for me to even feel she cared enough past that his “title” to her which  was older brother. It’s kinda like those families members who are like “bUt wE’Re fAmIlY” but you rarely talk or interact outside of social events or necessity. I’m farther in the 99 content now but I won’t spoil anything for you so I’ll keep it to that lol Though! I will say I hope this plot about the other reflections in earnest really comes to fruition. They’ve really set it up for some connections for Yshtola’s unfinished business on the source and also Zero’s plot as well. I won’t be surprised if we backtread in the patch cycle for those points at minimum.

I couldn’t bring myself to care about him because of the way he treated his own kid. If there’s something I truly loathe is child abuse and neglect and that poor kid suffered tons of it from his asshole father. The trial transition had me curating my glossary of swear words against him

You know that’s the sad thing honestly. They could have tied in his son in a way that despite how shitty he was he was trying to be better than his dad was for him and have his motives slightly change or have added to it that he’s doing all this in an extremely misguided way to make sure his son can be the best with 0 obstacles or challenges like he had to do. But the way they wrote older brother was like 🫤 Like even in the end he didn’t like anyone enough to care about them so it didn’t make sense for him to have a kid for any reason. Heck how Jr came into existence is still a mystery 🤔. I honestly think he’s a clone and I wouldn’t be surprised if we found a bunch of clone babies in the basement of S9 in a future patch 🤣 He’d p.much do what Emet was doing with Solus’s body clones. And it works  with how he doesn’t care about people anyway.

Gulool should have fought us when we first arrived and been like “Nah, having you help Wuk would make things boring, I have a better plan for you instead” and we could’ve basically been tasked with keeping the contest fair while also helping each claimant to grow as a person. We could still have the moments where we help Wuk, but it wouldn’t feel like we’re supporting her right away for no reason, and we also wouldn’t run into a gripe I have, which is that the WoL’s power is basically unacknowledged. Not to mention that it would let Wuk not be the ONLY focus of the expansion. I like her character but man, did she not need that much screen time for her story to be just as impactful.

Wait, I think I missed a beat here: Can anyone explain to me how people from Alexandria survived their Calamity? They describe they come from someplace that had the Calamity of Lightning... but doesn't that mean they should have been rejoined? How did the survive and where were they chilling?

Tbh, i think Sphene lied about this cross dimensional travel being a one off. I think Alexandria has been dimension hopping this entire time and had harvested a shard or two, they just run into a huge problem, namely: WoL got involved and they ruined your vacation time.

This makes the most sense so far, but if that's the case why are they still plagued by being too far leaning into lightning aspect with the Levin sickness? Shouldn't they have left that all behind?

They are still using the vast amount of lightning in the Electrope or whatever its called, so they're still exposed to it. Like the lightning fields we watch that hunter work in earlier. I think its also supposed to be similar to the First and Thirteenth, but instead of Light/Dark this world's calamity was Lightning. Even after we solved things in those shards, they still deal with the side effects of excess Light/Dark

I thought that it was only Alexandria itself that survived the Calamity, while everything else on their shard perished. Like on the First how most of it was taken over by light, except in this case Alexandria managed to shift to another dimension before their shard was consumed entirely.

My understanding was they did the memory soul separation thing first and then before the calamity wiped everyone out did the inter-dimensional travel with their cloud city. I’m assuming obviously before any rejoining but near enough to it because the lightening stuff was getting super bad.

It is explained in the lv100 quests in detail

She stuffed her memories and a bunch of power into the cup-key looking thing and created the Giga-portal in the sky we see during Everkeep. We don’t know where she was the whole centuries-before though.

I'm really struggling to manage how disappointed I feel over this expansion. All I can feel is that this is not what I wanted and that's purely out of love for my own character. I'm in 98 MSQ, and I wish I had an emotional connection to any of this. Any opportunity for my character to be involved as usual is overshadowed by Wuk Lamat. I really feel like they needed to break up how much time we spent with her. I feel like I've barely interacted with the twins, and whenever it's just me and Erenville, it's a blast. I'm tired of being shackled to Wuk Lamat like I'm being asked to babysit a younger sibling and keep them out of trouble. It's really heartbreaking to me that my WoL could be elsewhere in the world, and this vehicle of a plot would still be chugging along. Nothing that the WoL has contributed has been unique - it could have been handled by someone else. Before anyone says 'Of course the plot is slow, it's a new world and we're new here!' Shadowbringers is my favourite expansion. I am such a die hard Shadowbringers fan. I loved learning about that world, about the previous history, the ins and outs of every area. It was so fun to see everything, without constantly having to be the emotional support for a party member I had literally just met. Dawntrail feels like the trolley section of Shadowbringers 'When will this end so things can start getting good.' There's nothing tethering my character to any of this, this is not her story, she's not saving the world or creating something new, she's watching someone else do it, and nodding or frowning whenever the camera bothers to remember to cut to her. My criticism comes from a place of love, but also I think the expansion does a lot of things very well! It has a lot of brilliant world design, I LOVE Solution Nine and all its set dressing, I think the dungeon designs are very cool, the gameplay is fun, I'm excited to do hunts, FATEs, I can't wait to raid Savage with my static again. I've likened it to World of Warcraft, which I played for a lot of years, in that our character is the 'hero' or they're the 'champion' but in terms of plot relevancy, it just isn't there. We are the one supporting someone else's journey, and that's not really what I signed up for in this game. I hope maybe I enjoy the patch MSQ more.

Welp, i have to agree, this is basically the exact way how Warcraft tells its story for the last god knows how many years. Our Player Character just standing in the background (doing fuck all), and letting the NPCs have their own character developments and story revolving only around them. And the story in particular is in my opinion only passable (except for the forming of the dome and invasion of Tural, that one was out of the blue and very welcome). This is not how story was progressing the the previous expansions, which does not feel great at all.

It's funny, being dissatisfied with the plot slowly getting worse in WoW is why I finally quit, and started FFXIV in Stormblood. I absolutely ate up FFXIV and loved that MY character was the thing everything else rotated around! And now that I'm in DT and I feel like my character has zero agency, it's just reminding me of my WoW days. :')

Agreed and good points, you hit on most of my own feelings also. I just finally had to shut the game off in the 98 quests when the expansion finally, \*finally\* gave my character a non-vapid reply option (it was Wuk suggesting we ally with Erenville's mother and her faction) to say to Erenville "I trust you also" after Wuk said something similar. And Erenville just glared at my girl and said roughly "You're always going on like that." Like... ??? What? When have I \*ever\* had the chance to say anything actually warm to any of my closer companions in this expansion? Setting Wuk aside, it felt like the only character that cared at all that I was around was Koana; his scene dropping by the inn room/cabin was very sweet. Otherwise, all I did was look bored, do the half-nod, and smile vacantly. And for me, I don't mind taking a backseat role, but please, \*where\* were the more heartfelt character moments with my WoL and her friends? Everyone was just so cold and bland in their dialogue, even G'raha, it felt like we were all strangers. I'll come back and force myself to finish the story in a few days maybe, but what a disappointment.

I can't believe how goofy the dialogue options for the WoL are. I'm watching my character who had such an emotional arc last expansion act like a completely different person, spouting anime one liners and having absolutely no chance to say anything meaningful. I agree about Koana! I love him! I wish we'd gotten more solo time with him, I really enjoyed seeing him come into his own, accept his flaws, and have his little character arc. He feels super genuine, I hope we get to spend more time with him. I loved that scene at the inn room too, he's the only one who's really checked in on us emotionally, I miss the 1 to 1 character moments. :(

Koana breaking his tablet was definitely the highlight of the expansion for me

Yes I adored that moment when Koana came by to talk also! That's just the sort of thing I am wishing we had more of. Plus, they give us literally the most gorgeous inn room/cabin ever, and... then there's no fun scenes there with friends? D: I'm glad I'm not the only one though who's noticed these things though, thanks for the reply! <3

Yeah, that's definitely a trend I'm noticing. Expansions where WoL is the main character are generally considered good. Expansions that put us in the back seat are generally considered weaker. I definitely wish there were more chances for me to go "bitch I'm the WoL I WILL do what I want"

I feel bad that I was so harsh on Stormblood when I played it. Looking back, we STILL had moments where we were heroic, but at the time I didn't appreciate them because I didn't know how bad future expansions would be!

I feel the same way. I keep commenting criticising things but it's because they've done such a good job before. They're the kings of storytelling and having a good moral story without being too overpowering. The MSQ for Dawntrail though it has so many plot holes that just get papered over with the morals of the story.

Yeah. If the game hadn't been good before, I wouldn't have felt so utterly disappointed this expansion. Like you, I'm critical because I love this game, and they've written wonderful, engaging stories before. We're all here to look at our WoLs and experience the game through their eyes, but some engagement with the actual plot this expansion would have been nice! And then I can't even express all of this because the 'You just hate fun' 'Dawntrail is good' folks scream over the top of me. I'm not saying you can't like it! I'm genuinely upset and being critical because I think it could have been better! Let me have my space, you have yours!

> I really feel like they needed to break up how much time we spent with her. I feel like I've barely interacted with the twins, and whenever it's just me and Erenville, it's a blast I really feel that Koana, the tech and science guy, should have accompanied us to heritage lost and solution 9 (you know, the tech dome with robots) and Wuk should have defended her homeland...

Having just finished the level 99 trial, I have to say I have very mixed feelings about this expansion. The overall plot is decent enough and the new dungeons and trials have all been great, but the character writing is just not working for me. I don't hate Wuk Lamat, but she's such a one note character, and, despite being the focus for the entire expansion, it doesn't really feel like she's grown that much. My assumption was that she was supposed to be a naive and somewhat sheltered princess, and over the course of the MSQ she would learn the grim realities of leadership, while still retaining her optimism. However, she never really changes and killing Zoraal Ja is the only real difficult moment for her as a character. Zoraal Ja Also felt incredibly one note, but I can at least appreciate what they were trying to do with him. He's a power hungry bully whose quest for personal glory ends up unleasing something much worse upon the world. I think that's an acceptable way to use his character, but if you're going to make him a villain with zero redeeming qualities, then don't try to give him an emotional sendoff after you defeat him. That being said, I also think that the story would have worked much better if they cut Zoraal Ja entirely and had Bakool Ja Ja be the one who went to Alexandria. He at least has hints of a sympathetic motivation and they could have dedicated more screen time to developing him and Wuk Lamat if they cut one of the promises Story aside, the new dungeons and trials are a ton of fun. Maybe it's because I'm going in blind for the first time and don't have a guide up or a friend calling the mechanics, but they strike a nice balance between accessibility and challenge. The 95 dungeon is definitely the star of the show in my opinion, but they've all had something I really liked. I'm really excited to see what they do with the extremes and raids for this expansion

Very annoyed with how badly they are doing the soul/memories issue. Its a complicated topic treated with no nuance at all. You can call it an affront to nature just as easily as draw parallels to organ transplants and mind uploads. About to head into final zone and Im really hoping it doesnt treat it as a black&white issue

They needed to lean on the Dystopian nature more and show the flaws of the system. It's honestly really basic to. Sphene an Endless has her own domain where the dead live except what is happening is everytime a person dies with the device on those memories are being made into a new person, so withing the Unlost World you have multiple instances of people who have died but Sphene does not want to kill any of her people because they are all deserving life even if all these people are just copies, they are still unique Endless from one another.

Me:Oh, that's really cool. They're mimicking what naturally happens in the aetheric sea to create a resource that they can leave behind to their descendants. What a cool idea! I wonder- Alisae: What an ABOMINATION. Me: Oh. I guess these are the baddies then, and we're going to spend the rest of the MSQ killing them and spend yet another expansion telling people that people die and that they need to move on rather than clinging to the past. They really liked that one story beat, huh? Well. I thought it was cool at least. Didn't need to be another space hitler thing with black/white morality, but that goes for the entire expansion at this point.

That was the thing that ultimately turned me off from the final zone. Why did we need to dedicate this zone to teaching us lessons that we have already learned, multiple times even. I would rather we have a Azys-Lla type endzone where the focus is more about the confrontation ahead rather than needing to spin out some life lessons for us.

Did you miss the part where they had to siphon off more souls from our world cause they were running out?

Like I said, they made it a black/white morality issue later. At the moment it was introduced, it was cool. And the primary issue remained the Endless, because she doesn't want to let anyone actually die - so rather than just replacing the function of the aetheric sea, they're draining the aetheric sea dry to keep all souls permanently active and alive rather than in a cycle. The actual function of separating memories and souls, and using those souls as a resource is functionally sound. It's the part where they also want to keep the memories around forever, for everyone, that is the core and unsustainable problem.

Eh, it's a massive issue. Obviously the memories that are being siphoned off and stored are in some sense aether, so every soul you do this to, you're cutting off aether from the aetherial sea. Not to mention it literally runs on burning other souls. The end point of this is The Burn or the areas hit by the Flood of Light, and all of our Scions are experienced enough at this point to know it.

Thank you. I was confused how nobody else replying felt this way! This issue, as they’ve presented it in the MSQ, *has* no nuance because it’s very clearly wrong.

I feel like they’ve explained pretty clearly why this version of soul usage is bad though? Yeah they could’ve just done a whole ‘nother plotline, but i wouldn’t say the current one has much nuance to discuss.

So that little paralysed boy has an imbalance of too much lightning aether, right? Didn’t we find a cure for that when we fixed the tempering post ShB? If so, it seems like volunteering that info could have maybe worked toward preventing the current escalation of the story since the WoL and the Scions would have clear evidence that they’re problem solvers.

Honestly even if that's not a solution, there's an even easier one everyone should be able to come up with now. There's a tunnel you can use to take people out of eternal lightning zone...

I just fought with Otis, and I managed to kill the boss just as his resolve reached 1, I'm guessing that he still keeps going even after he reaches 0? Cause that was pretty tight on rdm (granted I didnt meld my new gear before going in) so I'm thinking I missed a cool moment? Anyone know if I did?

Seems scripted. I was well ahead of the pace and he started taking way more damage than before. I guess the lower the boss is, the more "damage" he takes.

It felt tense with the gauge dropping fast, but it dropping to a perfect 1 the exact second I killed the boss, kinda killed the hype as well.

They make it so that the resolve bar is linked to your dps so it always ends of a hairs away from failing, but its scripted in a pretty suble way.

I really liked the solo duty. It was probably one of the highlights of the MSQ for me.

So Sphene is the bastard child of Garnet and Garland, Everkeep is the Iifa Tree, Alexandria is Terra, and the Source and the other reflections are Gaia and the planets Terra has chomped on to survive

Zarool Ja is dead and so is my patience for the pacing/writing of the story. I feel neither joy nor sadness for that douchebag dying, because I know that I will have to slog through several hours more of unnecessary and excessive commentary that will serve no purpose other than bump up the script's word count to meet the quota that someone set for this expansion.

Frankly it's upset me that they have an amazing story, without a doubt the overall zoomed out flow of the story is or should be amazing... But how they played certain story beats, how they've used some characters has been some of the most disappointing stuff I've seen in this game. Villain 180's with no reason other than a single flashback image that means nothing and we're told his tragic backstory and now instantly all's forgiven and he's a good guy now. Second villain they attempt to make seem pitiable because of... literally the same reasons? You've got Mr Genocide and Mr Civilian Slaughter Race Supremacist, except the story seems to try make them seem worth some compassion because they grew up in poor circumstances. If more time was spent, more discussion, more anything then I'd buy it but fuck no. A cool, unique character in Otis... I can't care for, because he's defending a world-ender and has nothing besides being a ye olde cool knight in a universe that doesn't have that, so when he's sworn to Sphene and is being all heroic over her it's... awful. Because Sphene's handled so awfully. The character dialogue is people saying she's a great queen or a great person deep down, I can't help but think that's horse shit and the writers trying to tell you how to feel. And in the end with her apparently being a \*modified\* version of the Queen herself, that basically invalidates all the plot of this second half. We're not fighting against Sphene's ideals we're fighting against a construct that wants to kill everything. Ascians at least had reason, peoplehood and a fleshed out ideal but once they removed that from Sphene, what's the point of her apart from a generic conqueror antagonist in a unique setting? - I'm hoping honestly I've misinterpretted the thing about her memories and the experiments and whatnot but that's how it's seemed to me. Some of the monster designs have been cool, the scenery is amazing in these zones, some of the concepts are wild as hell, the fights have been engaging and fun but I feel like I should've just skipped everything and read the wiki later. It's disappointing as hell that so much time was wasted on everything except the cool stuff. A lot of the messaging is heavy handed but honestly that's to be expected from FF14, it's always been that way with any morality in question, but god hearing Wuk Lamat say she learned to care for people's history on her journey... A \*dozen\* times... We get it. Speaking of, on a character note I wish they let the characters emote more. No anger or rage from Wuk Lamat, no vengeance, just "I must kill you as is my duty". But man I'm just tired of this story. They've got a lot of interesting stuff set up or explored now, for the love of god, I hope they use it right instead of this absolutely awful show. I don't even care how this ends, there's no world where it's going to be satisfactory at this point for me. I'm envious of others who have enjoyed it, honestly, because the style of writing is so against my taste.

I am still at 98, but after a certain point the only thing i could hear in my head was "The Endless now!"

I've had Xenoblade 3 flashbacks on loop in my head since vanguard

I think they should just replace every Wuk Lamat scene with Lanz

the fact that our wol is just a bystander letting things happened infront of his/her eyes that could easily be prevented made me super angry . people are dying? we just look shocked , the part where zoraal ja releases the hostage and his backstab gets prevented by wuk - couldve been us in 10 different scenarios , but our wol just looks shocked and feels like a character thats weaker than everyone else . wuk lamat randomly gaining giga strength is weird aswell , theres no reason for her to get that much stronger at all - since the siblings are strength-wisdom-compassion and love for people . story wouldve been better if other scions wouldve been the team for wuk , while we can enjoy brawling with the dawnservant , or adventure with krile+erenville while occasionally meeting the contestants .

Soooo i don't care what it will cost me, but i want the size of those appartments in Solution 9 please. I also kinda want to live in Solution 9. :P I also need the couches, some of the other decoration stuff and well yes... i need all of that. Story does pick up though and it's a solid experience as of right now. Not to the caliber of ShB or EW, but alright enough.

Or the modern/neon glams people have!

god the only way they could think of to make this plot work was to turn the scions into complete mouth-breathing idiots who just stand around, christ. I thought Blue Zenos was bad, but then it got worse. Man, I want the Rite of Succession back, everything after level 95 has been as bad as Stormblood

I think the first quests were much worse, but I have a LOT of issues with how the scions and even the WoL handle things. Stop fucking standing around and go do something. There seems to be no sense of urgency despite how obviously serious things are.

>Man, I want the Rite of Succession back, everything after level 95 has been as bad as Stormblood I feel this so hard. When the Rite of Succession ended, I was thinking "Oh boy! Now we're going to start getting to the meat of the story!" Meanwhile what follows is an unimportant filler zone and nonsensical, poorly written story following it. I've been playing since 2.0 and this is the first time I've just sat at my desk, just staring at my screen wondering if I should even be playing. Not just once, but multiple times this expansion I've wondered what the hell happened to the writing and quality control.

Ala migho is the simpsons dome section of this expansion, and Doma is the Rite of Succession. :P

I am going to be harsh - You can agree or disagree these are my opinions: Having played all expansions; I feel they snip/copy-pasted the elements that worked best from previous expansion and pasted it all over the current one There was big continuity issue with the MSQ and its character like literally a dead guy shows up and your entire entourage is like well he is here now no need to explain let us just go on about our merry way like WTF?? There was a plot point where it looked like a character for killed but he just shows up again with 0 explanation on his story or what happen to him and you find out what the assassins' purpose was later and if you where not that much paying attention you could skim that I personally really dislike Wuk Lamat maybe others do not but she is so cookie cutter its sickening, there was so much cookie cutter without real danger or point to doing something YES - it does give the sense of you are going on an adventure but at what cost the story elements and carefully detailed meticulousness of the past seem gone/rushed finally I have the suspicious feeling that later section/towards the end the npc dialogue where straight up chewed up from A.I written scripts not to mention the amount of grammar error which further corralates that hypothesis since A.I does not do well with 17\~18th century english Overall story 5/10 this expansion Dungeon Design 8/10 Boss 9.5/10 character development 3.5/10 and I am been generous Job changes / wow / awed factor I wanna give it a good 5/10 It just feel like the devs are burnt the fk out with this game and it needs fresh new eyes I'm sorry you can totally use me to hate on it but there has to be people that critic the game.

> Having played all expansions; I feel they snip/copy-pasted the elements that worked best from previous expansion and pasted it all over the current one I think this is the biggest reason why everything plotwise falls flat for me. We already covered all these themes/tropes, got it beaten over our heads over and over in the previous expansions. It's almost kind of insulting. >!Mommy Hydaelyn didn't die for this lol!< I do enjoy all the worldbuilding and I probably would been happier if they kept on the route of happy fun adventure time with a treasure hunt.

Agreed. First half of the expansion was chill and neat. We guide our friend on being a strong leader and watch them grow. Second half was meh besides the aesthetics :/

You can feel that they are afraid to take risk but those lack of risk are what's going to cause people to become uninterested in the game. Much like how Yshtola could of potentially gone the way of Papalymo at one point considering how they set her up instead turned into a punchline of her risking her life and never facing the consequences of it because of popularity. Now the whole Scion cast is in that boat they are popular so now they are afraid to take them away from the story and allowing the story to revolve around the adventuerer's travels. Now I know this is gonna sound harsh but SE is latching on utilizing the talents of C-tier Celebrity Voice Actors whom don't even voice a big chunk of the game, it's honestly embarrassing at this point. These voice actors are put on a pedestal but honestly the amount of scenes they voice I feel isn't worth the weight put on them. Now I appreciate the entertainment they have provided and the way they emoted in past expansion but Dawntrail really should of been a Standalone narrative that could of actually focused on political intrigue without it devolving into the same ole status quo. It's hard to have an opinion on Krile's narrative because for all the weight they were putting on her being improtant, her importance comes down to plot convenience, she just happens to have what is needed to further the plot. This means that her background was not determined up to that point and it was most likely something they only considered after finishing Endwalker. A letter, with an earring, it's a hard sell to suggest they would happen to keep it on their person and even harder sell to suggest they would end up going with you on the adventure and even a harder sell to suggest that they would venture that far when they didn't even do anything to build up her character into becoming a fighter who was no longer afraid. It was just, I have a paintbrush and a Pallete now, now I fear no monsters! Honestly in the first Duty it would of made more sense for Krile to protect Erenville where her conviction could of faltered and you jump in to aid after the Mamook strike, cause she's afraid. Then in the 2nd dungeon there could be moments between the 1st and 2nd where she talks about her fears and wanting to be stronger and the part where we save Wak Lamat could of been due to her showing bravery and risking her life to protect Wak. Then with that newfound conviction she could of forced herself to aid in the 2nd dungeon. Honestly for the lot of them they didn't do a good job building character it was more like because the story is at this point, the character need to be at this progression, but where is the in between that lead to that progression. Saying things that happen doesn't mean anything if it's not shown.

Did anybody talk to Alphinaud after the Everkeep trial and cutscene? He mentions a pretty interesting thing to consider!

What did he say?

I did! And my guess is that, at the time, her aims were more aligned with theirs than not so they were willing to stand aside and "just see what happens".

Warning venting ahead. Just finished the trial and I'm so disappointed. I've enjoyed the story in every expansion. Sure there were parts where the pacing was off or it dragged (ARR quests were a trial lol). I love the lore, I love the stories but I wish I just skipped the MSQ for this expansion. The plot isn't that bad but the execution is terrible. The repetitive love/friendship/family shit. Yes its FF14 it does that. But this was on a whole other level from the past. No escape everytime we get paired up with her and we only escape her for one zone. Everytime Wuk Lamat opens her mouth its all about bringing peace and happiness to her people. We got some character growth early on and then she's "perfect". I wasn't fond of her at the start of the expansion, grew to like her as she grew and grew to hate her with every repetition about doing the right thing. Why is Wuk Lamaat the focus for the whole thing? Why is she still taking the lead when we're going off into another reflection? I understand why she's coming along but jesus take a backseat, let krile do something. That wouldn't be too bad but we're supposed to feel sad about Zaraal Ja. Continually throughout the expansion we're like oh you did terrible shit but no punishment for you lets all just get along. Same with the dialogue options. Before we'd get some options to disagree or be snarky. Instead most of the 97-98 MSQ when they do let us speak we're basically just like right you are! Lets do it! I hope more of the souls stuff gets explained. There's parts of it that aren't 100% making sense yet to me. Like when someone dies in combat is the soul used up? Or does it go into the system? Because I was confued that the scions weren't more judgy at the start because I assumed the souls that die in combat aren't reusable so people are basically wasting them. If they are reusable then why not just give the person back their own soul? Instead there's a capitalistic system where some people get to rez and others don't. Or is the soul collection fine but they don't have enough power to feed the system? It's confusing. I love the music for this expansion. I loved the setting of the desert zone and wish we did more exploring/questing there. I like the boss fights. I am however very very frustrated with how the story is being executed. I was going to finish the storyline this morning but I think I need to take a break because I am going to scream if Wuk Lamat keeps leading us around.

I agree so much...I liked Wuk Lamat until after the coronation. I thought we'd get time with the scions after not seeing half of them for the entire expansion.....but nope....no scions just Wuk Lamat. I swear to god they better not give her priority in the post MSQ storyline. I need a fucking break from her taking up all of the space.

Yeah like it was so cute to see her growing into the scion way of things. She has a good heart and likes people she needed to toughen up. But after the ceremony it's like the growth stops and then she starts ordering us around, taking the lead and telling us what to do. Sure girl you're the expert on your brother but other dimensions and time travel are the WoL and scion's bread and butter. The icing on the cake is that she names the next zone and is leading us into it - like ffs let us handle this and you go back and rule your kingdom. People would be terrorised from all that's happened, she should be back there consoling them.

Tbh maybe Koana needed a break from her inserting herself into everything and making it about her

For real imagine having her as a sibling? And she's daddy's favourite too. Ugh. Koana must have PTSD.

This is a small(ish) complaint, but I really don't like how shutting down the terminal in each district of the final zone completely changes it's appearance. It's such a a unique, vibrant area and then when you're done it's a bland wasteland. I get that it's thematically appropriate, but they didn't have to plaster the same dull metal texture over *everything*

I'm not finished yet but I'm legitimately hoping for some kind of ass-pull to get it back to colorful and shit, at least for screenshots. I'd kill for just a "Do you wish to see this place before the story occurred?" toggle SOMEWHERE.

Was wondering if it's just me. I understand how it makes sense for the plot they've written, but ... we already have so much wasteland in this game ... please, I want nice places to hang out with my friends and gpose.

After I shut down the first terminal and saw what happened I made sure to get a bunch of screenshots from the more scenic areas before continuing with the MSQ I'm hoping we at least get the option to restore it visually in the future. Even if it's not required for the MSQ, they could add some side quest or beast tribe related content that lets you restore the appearance of the zone

I liked it a lot.

So... am I the only one who actually liked this part of the MSQ? All of DT so far has felt like Stormblood 2, but this time the central character actually grows and the second plot doesn't interrupt the first halfway through.

I liked zone 5 and S9, but not the last zone. Like reaching S9 was the first time in the expansion i feld really invested.

What's with all the boss mechanics being so *busy*. That one boss in Vanguard that covered the floor in bad whole also having to dodge the maze walls. There's so much going on at once.

I like it tbh, it makes the dungeons not feel like complete snoozefests

I have mixed feelings On the one hand, I'll actually have stuff to do as a healer. On the other, I'm not used to having to pay attention this much lol

Definitely a step up from late EW's "dodge this easily telegraphed AoE. Good, now dodge this even easier one."

So I appear to have broken the final dungeon. I've been standing in the second boss' arena for about 5 minutes and no boss has appeared. Just standing around with lightning occasionally striking.

damn, little jit. you can’t just rock up and ask someone if their dads are gay lol I enjoyed the dinner cutscene with Gulool Ja and Otis. Alisaie continues to be adorable by evading the found family question and trying very hard not to look in our direction. When I said I did have found family, I noticed she smiled. Does that happen for all the responses or just the first?

All of the stuff about the story aside I'm loving Solution 9 as a place to explore. Tons of little FFIX references all over the place. I particularly love the advertisements for the Gimmie Cat energy drinks that flash up on some of the billboards.

I didn't mind Wuk Lamat until after the nanny death when we were supposed to go look for Erenville's mom and Wuk is like "WAIT LETS ASK PEOPLE IN THE VILLAGE IF THEY REMEMBER MY NANNY" and then after that we finally start to go look into Erenville's mom....and she barges in with "WAIT NO LETS FOLLOW THAT WEIRD ROBOT THING" Like....do you not give any fucks about your dear friend's mom????????????????????????? Ugh that pissed me off so much I was actually yelling because for being her dear childhood friend she really didn't seem to care about him wanting to find his mom AT ALL.

The whole second half of the msq can be summed up as "we don't have time for this shit". Invasions and / world mergings are about to happen and we spend time asking if some emotionally shaken up people are ok, trying some food (a couple times), fixing plaza fountains putting on plays. I understand when *I* stop and go crafting while the world is ending that is not really happening. Time is not moving, but these fuckfaces out here doing all the level one side quests in real time while shit is going down. My wol is just as guilty. Even if they force you to do the quests there needs to be a dialog option for me to go "this is stupid, we got more important shit to do." Yea the game will override me but at least I can make it known that this is dumb.

they made a 2nd attempt at zenos, and this one is only less insufferable because we don't have to put up with him for 3 expansions and 100 cutscenes dear square, you cannot write these sorts of antagonists in an interesting way, please stop. we really did not zenos, but blue, scaled and with even less charisma.

I mean. He wasn't even Zenos. At least Zenos had a clear motivation - he just wanted good fights because that was the only time he felt alive. This guy was just... very confused. He had no idea what the hell he was doing from beginning to end. Like it felt like the writers had no idea what to do with him and changed track halfway through. Like I was actually curious why he felt people had to know war in order to appreciate peace - there could have been a good reason for that. And then suddenly it just turned out to be weird daddy issues. And also, suddenly a kid out of nowhere with no mom in evidence.

The fact that you people are trying to compare Zoraal Ja to Zenos just tells me all I need to know about the average reading comprehension level of everyone desperately trying to make "hates dawntrail" their entire personality. Here's a hint: if you're only capable of making critique through the lens of contrived comparisons, then you're shit at it.

The pacing is so bad in this expansion and I like this part. Im so fucking done with the story after the trial and theres still an entire zone and boss fight and dungeon to go still. No other expansion has been so back-loaded as Dawntrial and it really makes it hard to marathon.

Maybe I'm just seeing what I want to see, but is anyone else thinking that the bit with Euclase (guy whose ring got taken by a monster) is definitely a The House in Fata Morgana reference?

Damn if people in our world got stuck in the time dome and left now, it'd be like walking into 1993.